But these days, the Stanford political science professor has a new Twitter nemesis: President Donald Trump.

In a way that’s atypical of most former ambassadors, McFaul, who worked in the Obama administration and served as America’s man in Moscow from 2012 to 2014, has become one of the most prominent public voices criticizing Trump for his Russia and national security policies.

McFaul has jumped into the fray at a time when investigations into the Trump campaign’s purported ties to Russia and Russian interference in the 2016 election have cast a dark shadow in Washington, D.C. On social media and in frequent MSNBC appearances, he’s harangued Trump for what McFaul sees as the president’s obsequiousness to Russian President Vladimir Putin, his administration’s failure to staff key diplomatic posts and the alleged collusion between Trump campaign aides and the Russian government.

“I don’t see myself as part of the ‘resistance’” to Trump, McFaul said in a recent interview at his Stanford office. “But I feel like I have a responsibility to speak out.”

Like the man he criticizes, McFaul’s favorite method of communication is Twitter, where he has 275,000 followers. It’s a tool he first adopted as ambassador, when social media offered him a way to connect with the Russian public as relations between the two countries deteriorated.

McFaul said he doesn’t think Trump has any coherent Russia strategy. “Inside Russia, they’re making fun of him — they’re saying he’s weak,” McFaul said. “And yet he persists to keep this strategy of praise for Putin. That is perplexing to me.”

Wow. Would be a radical departure of decades of tradition. Where are Reagan admirers when we need them?! https://t.co/6kGn0A49gh

Trump made his biggest Russia misstep, McFaul said, when he blithely thanked Putin for ordering the U.S. to cut its Moscow diplomatic staff last month. “I want to thank him because we’re trying to cut down our payroll,” Trump said.

White House officials later claimed that Trump was being sarcastic. But McFaul, who worked alongside the 755 Russian embassy employees who will lose their jobs, wasn’t laughing.

After working for the Americans, “it’s going to be near impossible for them to find jobs in Russia,” McFaul said. “Many of them are going to be forced to leave their country.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment about McFaul’s criticism. But a National Security Council official, who asked not to be named, said the administration took Russian provocations seriously, saying that the administration’s actions against Russia, including recent consulate closures, “speak for themselves.”

ICYMI, one of the most embarrassing, unpatriotic, and uninformed comments our president has made (recently) https://t.co/EEEouZOubM

McFaul hasn’t been uniformly harsh on Trump. He’s lauded some of the president’s decisions and staff, including Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, and his nominee for ambassador to Russia: Jon Huntsman, a former Utah governor, GOP presidential candidate and U.S. ambassador to China. McFaul, who called Huntsman a “fantastic choice,” said the two have met to talk about the job.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he believes McFaul is playing a key role in educating the American public on Russia issues.

Like our Facebook page for more conversation and news coverage from the Bay Area and beyond.

“I admire how thoughtful and yet blunt Mike has been in analyzing President Trump’s Russia policy — and find it extraordinarily valuable given the unique and dangerous geopolitical threat Russia now poses to the U.S.,” Schiff said.

McFaul’s outspokenness is a sign of the times, said Steven Fish, a UC Berkeley political science professor. “He has not been a typical ambassador or typical former ambassador — but this is not a typical president either,” Fish said.

He’s also ruffled some feathers.

Ron Nehring, a former chairman of the California Republican Party, said he found McFaul’s broadsides against Trump inappropriate. “The Obama administration’s attempted ‘reset’ of U.S.-Russia relations was an unmitigated disaster that has since been completely discredited,” Nehring said. “Those who played a role in the failed Obama Russia policies don’t carry much credibility in criticizing the president today.”

McFaul first visited the Soviet Union as a Stanford undergraduate in 1983, spending a summer at Leningrad State University. It was the Montana native’s first time outside the U.S. He returned to Russia as a grad student at Oxford, studying the pro-democracy movement and meeting activists in Moscow.

Working as a White House foreign policy adviser during Obama’s first term, McFaul helped pave the way for coordination with Russia on the Afghanistan war, in addition to helping devise the New Start nuclear arms control treaty. But by the time he arrived in Moscow to take up the job of ambassador, relations between the two global powers had started to chill again. And the fact that he had written several books about the struggle for democratization in Russia didn’t endear him to Putin’s government.

McFaul found himself practicing a balancing act of diplomacy, trying to pin down areas of compromise with the Russian government while also meeting with pro-democracy activists. He got used to being accused of fomenting revolution on state TV and seeing intelligence agents show up at his sons’ soccer games.

Meanwhile, he embraced the more ceremonial aspect of the job with gusto, hosting American orchestra stars, NBA champs and the jazz pianist Herbie Hancock — a personal hero of McFaul’s — at Spaso House, the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Moscow. “That doesn’t happen in Palo Alto,” he said.

McFaul had barely used social media before becoming ambassador. He sent his first tweet from Moscow. But he quickly became known as one of America’s most prolific ambassadors on social media. Tweeting late at night, McFaul replied to Russians in Russian, delighting young activists and sometimes getting into debates with people from across the country.

His Twitter feed evolved into a melange of statements about human rights, photos of him and his family enjoying the Russian ballet or the Red Square, and missives about Stanford’s football teams.

Occasionally, he got himself into trouble, like when he unintentionally referred to a Russian city he visited with a slang word that roughly translates to “f***ville.”

“That went viral,” he said ruefully, “but it showed it was me writing the tweets.”

Now, McFaul’s Russian followers message him to complain that he doesn’t tweet in Russian as much anymore. “I’m more focused on what’s happening here, but I do hope to get back to that because I do miss that interaction with Russians,” he said.

Social media is one of the few ways McFaul has of connecting with them. He’s currently on the Kremlin’s sanctions list of Americans banned from entering Russia, and he hasn’t returned to the country since he resigned as ambassador in 2014.

While he doesn’t mind trading Moscow winters for the Palo Alto sunshine, McFaul misses his old post.

“I fear it’s the best job I’ll have in my entire life,” he said. “It’s a thrill and honor representing the United States of America — to show up in a black Cadillac with the American flag on it.”

Casey Tolan covers national politics and the Trump administration for the Bay Area News Group. Previously, he was a reporter for the news website Fusion, where he covered criminal justice, immigration, and politics. His reporting has also been published in CNN, Slate, the Village Voice, the Texas Observer, the Daily Beast and other news outlets. Casey grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and graduated from Columbia University.

More in Politics

Even if Trump's proposal fails in the Senate, Republicans hope to use the development to put the onus on Democrats and cast them as the ones who are standing in the way of solving the shutdown, after a series of public polls have shown Trump blamed more than Democrats for the impasse.

Analysts said Sunday's launch of what the Israeli military said was a midrange surface-to-surface missile may have been an attempt by Iran to establish a level of deterrence against Israel, which has repeatedly bombed its military assets in the country.